Letters to the Editor

Published 12:44 pm, Wednesday, September 18, 2013

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Plan to address bullying needed

The suicide of the 15-year-old high school student is a tragedy that could have and should have been avoided.

The sad truth is the school system is unable to deal with the problem of bullying. For 10 years, the young man was consistently shoved, pushed, taunted and also deliberately banged on the head with a locker door by one of the bullies resulting in a cut requiring stitches. This should not have been brushed off by the high school as an "accident." Now, more and more students are stepping up and telling horrifying stories of being bullied. These incidents have been reported to the school teachers, administrators and the principal, but nothing is done except for talking to the bullies. This does nothing and the bullying continues.

Why isn't there a plan in place to have the parents of the bullies and the parents of the bullied to promptly meet with the teachers, administrators, and the juvenile officers of the Police Department?

The time has come for parents to realize that they must get very involved and take charge in helping their children. Each family must figure out how best to handle the situation.

When we were young, our parents gave us their full support in solving our bullying problems. We did the same for our children when they were young and bullied at all three levels of the Greenwich school system. Our calls to the high school headmaster went unheeded.

Waiting for the administrators in the school system and the Police Department to deal with this serious problem may only result in more tragedies.

We have high hopes for the high-school students who have organized a group to deal with this problem. But the bullying seems to start at the grade school and middle school levels. How do we deal with that?

The tragic suicide of Bart Palosz calls for an objective investigation, leading to full disclosure and accountability. Unfortunately, the Board of Education made a bad decision in assigning the investigation to the town legal department. That department cannot possibly be considered objective.

The town faces possible legal claims by the Palosz family, which, if asserted, will be defended by the legal department. Under our legal system, that department has a professional responsibility to discourage, rather than promote, full disclosure and accountability. And thus under applicable ethical and professional standards, the town legal department has an absolute conflict of interest which bars it from conducting an objective investigation leading to full disclosure and accountability.

Any serious investigation of the events leading to Bart's death (as well as the general issue of bullying in the Greenwich schools) requires an independent investigator with experience, objectivity and resources to determine the facts and draw informed conclusions.

The investigator should have power to compel testimony and should have access to all relevant documents including medical records. The alleged shoving incidents, one of which resulted in a trip to a hospital and stitches in Bart's forehead, were -- if they occurred -- violent crimes within a town school.

The investigator should also have the experience needed to suggest future policies about bullying. When should a bully be subject to suspension and even expulsion? When should teachers and other staff members who overlook bullying be punished, perhaps even fired?

The investigator should have the skills and judgment to resolve, in an unbiased manner, privacy issues. If, as Superintendent of Schools McKersie has indicated, anything relating to Bart's experience is subject to rules of privacy, an expansive interpretation of those rules could mean that most of the results of the investigation and subsequent actions by the school administration might never be disclosed to the public and therefore the truth may never be known.

In an analogous case, earlier this month an out of state law firm experienced in sexual misconduct investigations was selected to investigate how the University of Connecticut handled information about a professor alleged to have had improper sexual conduct with young boys and university students.

The state was very careful to stipulate that no firm with any prior relationship with UConn should be considered for the job.

Just as the State did in the UConn case, the town must hire an experienced, totally independent professional to investigate and report to the public about the alleged pattern of widespread bullying and staff indifference leading to Bart's tragic death and misery for so many other Greenwich students.